Sermon by Rev. Victor Carpenter, October 21, 2007
First Religious Society, Carlisle, Massachusetts
Last Christmas I was gifted with a volume of essays. I checked the table of contents; glanced through the authors included. No Emerson. No Ralph Waldo Emerson ! How could anyone produce a collection of essays and omit the most famous American essayist of the 19th century?
The answer to that question appeared in the editor’s introductory essay. He wrote,” My own introduction to the personal essay, and, I suspect it is shared by many of my generation, was by way of the bloated, vatic and never less than pompous Ralph Waldo Emerson. Few things are more efficient at killing the taste for a certain kind of literature than being force-fed Emerson in school at an early age. “
Yes! Here was an editor after my own heart ! I had been force-fed Emerson, that boring self-righteous goody-goody. We met when I was 16. We parted when I was 17. Good-by Mr. Know It All.
I was in my mid-20s when I discovered Unitarianism; and suddenly there he was again. Fact is that I discovered Unitarianism by entering the 2nd Church in Boston. The same church that Emerson, more than a century earlier, had been called to minister and which he quit over a dispute about the communion service.
Discovering this fact I figured that our life journeys were somehow linked together and so we should get re-acquainted.
And the Emerson I discovered was a far cry from that fuddy-duddy prig I’d met in High School. Here was a passionate intellectual explorer; here was a guy who flings himself into the wilderness of personal experience – and challenges you to do the same.
Emerson’s challenge to the students at the Harvard Divinity School was to ‘Acquaint yourself first hand with divinity”. That could be the motto for his entire life.
Born in 1803, he evidently didn’t show much early promise. But then his aunt MaryMoody Emerson got her hands on him.
Mary Moody was the most striking and influential figure of Emerson’s youth, and for good reason. For starters Mary Moody Emerson was a dwarf, four feet, three inches tall, who slept in a coffin-shaped bed. But this woman could think, and her quicksilver mind inspired and directed young Waldo toward imagination-fired genius.
Aunt Mary had a wonderful motto: “Always do what you are afraid to do”. More than anyone else she inspired him to think for himself.
And think he did. Writing things down was Emerson’s way of thinking. His journals, notebooks, diaries amount to over 3 million words contained in some 263 volumes. Everything is there: observations, anecdotes, conversations, ideas, meditations, dreams, and epiphanies. It’s immense; no selection can do it justice.
We of the Unitarian Universalist persuasion like to claim Emerson as a member of our own house4hold of faith; and, yes, he WAS a Unitatrian minister for a time. But his ministry to Boston’s 2nd Unitarian Church ended with vocation crises over serving communion.
He never accepted another full-time ministry. He was moving too swiftly through the intellectual climate of his time. AS he said of himself, “ I was never on a coach that went fast enough for me” and there is a wild, nervy, nearly out of control quality to his best writing. He was “the red hot transcendentalist”.
Transcendentalism” was the name of Emerson’s game. It asserted a new emphasis upon the primacy of the individual’s spiritual powers. To the students of the Harvard Divinity School he said, “ Acquaint thyself with first hand with divinity; why shouldn’t you enjoy a firsthand relationship with the universe!”
It knocked their socks off!!!! It still does! But can you imagine how it sounded to a society that was just beginning to emerge from the theological straight jacket of dour , predestination obsessed Calvinism??? A society that was just beginning to acknowledge its own power??
America at that moment was just beginning to grow in self-confidence. The land was just beginning to beckon exploration and settlement.
In his essay, “Nature” Emerson wrote, “All that Adam had,all Caesar did , you can have and you can do!” Imagine how such an affirmation sounded to Americans at that moment in our history ! As one critic put it,” The mind of Emerson was the mind of America - and the central concern of that mind was the American religion named “self-reliance “.
And that “mind of America” is echoed every time a patron at the bar turns to the piano player and requests the Frank Sinatra hit, “ I did it My Way!”
As one critic put it, “The mind of Emerson was the mind of America … and the central concern of that mind was the American religion of “self-reliance”.
Now just a minute; NOT so fast. The American religion might be self-reliant individualism, BUT American REALITY (in those decades before the Civil War) was exploitation; not only of the slave economy in the South but also of the waves of poor immigrants from Europe and poor Americans from local farm who were being fed into the factories of the industrial revolution.
Those people knew little of the benefits flowing from individualism and self-reliance.
So it’s important that we Unitarian Universalists, while acknowledging our ties to Emerson, recall ANOTHER Unitarian minister of that time.
Joseph Tuckerman. Not a household name; no luminary essayist.
Tuckerman was a Unitarian minister in Chelsea Massachusetts. Today it’s hard to think of Chelsea as a farming community, but even then it was beginning to feel the pressure of growing industrialism and exploitation, poverty and despair.
If Emerson was the poet of the “over-soul”, Tuckerman was the spokesperson of the “under-class”.
He recognized the connection between the urban life-style and poverty; of newly arrived immigrants crowded into ghettos of squalor. He believed that a dedicated ministry – located in those neighborhoods – could provide help to rise above such destructive living conditions.
Tuckerman was a social reformer. He was, by all accounts, a terrible preacher. His nephew wrote,” My uncle’s temperament was better adapted to elicit his powers of usefulness”
Those powers of usefulness moved in two directions: to enable poor people to acquire skills that would lift them out of poverty and to expose the twin myths that keep them poor: the myth that they themselves are responsible for their poverty, and the myth that the affluent have no responsibility for their aid.
Tuckerman was particularly effective in identifying the impact of women’s wages on poverty. He argued that putting money directly into women’s hands would strengthen the structure of the family and the community (whereas men’s disposition was to spend their money on themselves at the expense of family and children).
In 1834 there were over 30 Unitarian churches in Boston. Several of these congregations formed a support group for Tuckerman’s ministry-at-large. They called it “The Benevolent Fraternity of Unitarian Churches”. In 1991 the name was changed to “The Urban Ministry of Boston”.
I was sorry about that change. Yes, the new name is more consistent with the times and the purpose of the organization, but the term “Benevolent Fraternity “ (or Ben Frat) as we called it, fussy and anachronistic as it was, remains close to my heart.
Today, Tuckerman’ ministry (carried on by the Urban Ministry) concentrates on two areas: domestic violence tends the needs of youth – especially youth located in the depressed urban areas of Greater Roxbury.
Several years ago a special task force, committed specifically to influencing legislation that deals with children’s issues was established. It’s called the Tuckerman Coalition (and I am one of the founding members). Our task is to lobby the State House about laws effecting poor kids.
In this effort we employ a lobbyist who keeps us informed and points out where we can be effective. Because we are a political lobby we have no 501C3 tax status (that means our money given to the Coalition can not be claimed as a tax deduction).
Reflecting on this fact, one of our members suggested that not having deductible status would make people think were dangerous. What could be nicer than that!
Joseph Tuckerman died in 1841 - just as Emerson was reaching the height of his powers. As far as I know they never met one another, even though they traveled in the same social circles and shared the same religion.
I would like to think that Emerson’s recognition of human inter-dependence, our need to do and be for each other was, in some measure, the result of Tuckerman’s influence.
In 1852 Emerson wrote,” The last year has made politics our paramount responsibility. It is our duty to seek it. We do not breath well, there is infamy in the air!”
That phrase,” We do not breath well; there is infamy in the air “ would make a great bumper sticker for our own time.
Emerson was caught up in the freedom struggle that culminated in the Civil War. “Our cherished spiritual dignity”, he wrote,” is threatened by the coarse heel of slave power”.
Just as Tuckerman had recognized that “the coarse heel” of poverty was assassinating the American dream.
Emerson and Tuckerman. You should know their BOTH their names if, for no other reason that each served to create and extend the religious tradition represented by this church and by our Unitarian Universalist Association.
Emerson and Tuckerman are part of us – and we are part of them. They are in the words we sing, the prayers we pray, the action we take to deepen our spiritual lives and to build a better world. Amen